Burnley Grammar School

I enjoyed getting my own letter addressed to 'Master' when I was little, though I'm speaking back to the 60s, so a long time ago now. i don't see why this should not be used any more. Is it resented now for some reason?

As far as school showering is concerned, I certainly had go through that back in the late 60s into the 70s. None of us were keen I remember, as we obviously knew it was looming and talked about it, I remember that too. We seemed to think of it as a sort of right of passage into growing up at big school. But, what I particularly remember, was becoming 'hardened' to nudity in front of others just before Secondary School started, due to being on a children's ward for 3 months with my fractured femur.

I was in traction, so my leg in a Thomas Splint, which meant I was unable to get out of bed for weeks, also unable to wear pyjama bottoms, so just a jacket. I really didn't like the morning bed bath rituals, which frequently seemed to be given to me by two student nurses, who were probably only a few years older than me at that time. Some of them were very nice and respectful, but others were giggly and made me feel embarrassed and uncomfortable. I was a good looking kid which just made me more self-conscious. Perhaps my hair had grown a little during the summer break, but there was a particular morning, amongst others, that always stuck in my mind. After they'd washed my top half with jacket removed, on lowering the blankets to wash below, one of them blurted out, 'Oh I thought you were a little girl!' It might seem funny to some now, but it was an awful moment for me at that time, and I can vividly remember the feeling of just not knowing how to react, while feeling rather uncomfortable anyway. I was only 11, but I wasn't 5, and this is an example of something a girl would just never have to experience and put up with. I was placed alone in a side room for weeks for whatever reason, but they'd routinely leave the door wide open to a public corridor, even during moments like this. There was absolutely no privacy thought necessary for boys back then, so much so that I even think some took advantage of this. It was frequently and strictly observed for girls though. Societies have often thought this way down the years, I wonder why?

I eventually got used to this behaviour, and couldn't object, so school showering, even though not being able to do Gym/Games for weeks though still attend, I think was a little easier to cope with because of the previous months. It's surprising what kids got used to back then, as whatever we encountered was accepted as normal, as when so young there's nothing to compare anything with, and all 'adults' were respected and in charge. Certainly wouldn't be like this today, as I think we now live in an age where kids are given more respect and regard than ever before.

I broadly agree with Luke. It is a big anxiety, why pretend otherwise.

Just because nobody says anything doesn't mean the issue isn't out there.

That's boys for you. A male teacher surely knows this basic fact about boys.

Boys can keep their cards very close to their chests.

Comment by: Luke on 29th September 2023 at 22:50


Luke, you have my full sympathy. I completely understand, and judging by the responses many men have given here, it is clear we were not alone.

I have tried explaining to Nathan and others that it would be a very unusual lad who would actually say openly to a teacher that they had shower fear, because the teacher (and other pupils who might be listening) would doubtless not understand, find them risible and laugh at them, but so many boys went through this torture I am surprised that psychology is not taught as part of every PE teachers training. Threats and shouting are not the answer. Everyone suffered in silence. These days especially, and certainly throughout the last 20/30 years most people have showers at home, and I think it would be best if PE lessons were scheduled as the last period of the morning or afternoon, so the lads could go home and make their own arrangements - either that or stop the gang shower routine, and have individual cubicles, or a teacher "inspecting" the ablutions. Especially when you have dubious teachers like our Mr R and, as we see far too frequently in the newspapers, there are still far too many of his sort lurking about.

Nathan, are you saying that you think school shower fear doesn't exist?

If so I think you are wrong there. Did you shower at school yourself?

My school forced the showers on us and that was just over thirty years ago now. In the first month or two there was a lot of shower fear going on and attempts to escape doing them until we got a quite big warning about our continuing misbehaviour. That's right, not feeling too keen to shower and show off my privates was classed as misbehaviour where I attended in 1989-93. Everyone should have a right to refuse without question.

It looks to me like you pay lip service to such things from your earlier reply.

What a good comment Matthew S.

I'd forgotten about that but you're right. Even if you were a kid growing up in the 70s or 80s as recently as that you would find that when you got mail from friends and relatives for your birthday or Christmas it would often be addressed to Master. It always was to me from all kinds of people in the family from aunts, uncles and grandparents as well as others. Not my actual parents though. I seem to think I was getting mail addressed to Master Jason until I was about 16 and it stopped.

At school I was Master to nobody, no surprise I'm going to be another to say that all the PE lot called me Bailey and I think I'd have died of shock if they'd suddenly called out to me as Jason, it just wasn't what PE teachers seemed to be like, no idea why. It's almost like there was some edict from upon high, thy shalt not call boys their first names in PE in the same way for many of us it was thou shalt not allow boys their shirts in gym.

We had some horrendously bad nicknames for various teachers across the school. I can't believe most of them remained unaware of them, they must have filtered back somehow in some way.

Comment by: Will on 29th September 2023 at 14:19


Of course you can say so, Will. You can say what you like it is a free country.

I do not have a title, and I don't like being treated with deference - either giving it OR receiving it, - that is all. It is bourgeois these days, I feel. Even if I had a legitimate title I wouldn't use it. I am not that insecure.

I know this is unrelated to PE, but further to the interesting things that have been said about names and forms of address, can I mention the decline of addressing boys on envelopes as "Master" before forename and surname?

I found this interesting comment, that the practice "at one time given to boys up to the age of 12 or 13, has largely gone out of fashion. If adopted at all, it is now restricted to small boys up to the age of about 8 years, but is generally disliked by them" ("Debrett's Correct Form" by Patrick Montague-Smith, Headline Publishing, 1992 ed).

I remember being addressed as "Master", on a card or postcard from an older relative, at the age of nineteen. I had no objection.

I have followed the various comments made about PE and the picture of the boys in the gym is similar to the experience that I had. However, my school time was the mid 60s and our shorts were much shorter similar to the style worn at the time of the 66 World Cup.
During a conversation with some friends we were recalling our days at school and because one of those present has a child currently attending High School and made a comparison with the timetable and lessons that I experienced and the current situation.
It seems that the lesson periods are shorter, and PE is mainly a games session either indoors or out, or field sports. according to season and weather.
It seems that gymnastics is not included except for the pupils who have taken PE as an option for exams , presumably they are thinking of a career in teaching PE or some associated area.
Does any one know whether this is general across education or do most schools still include gymnastics i.e. vaulting horse wall bars etc.?

Sarcastic sounding teachers constantly referring to teenagers as Mister So and So, or Miss So and So was a factor of life for me in school and that just felt naff. I think I'd have just preferred my actual name or even just the surname even, going full Mister and Miss with youngsters sounded daft and as I said, sarcastic even if it wasn't intended to be as such.

So Alan you don't like being called Sir by anyone. But that is an incredibly polite and respectful way to address anybody, why would you take issue with that, especially as you have taken issue with the way you have been treated in the past in a less than respectful manner. You seem quite hard to please if you don't mind me saying so.

Thanks for your continued input Nathan. What you say sounds perfectly sensible to me.

I was called by my surname in PE and one or two others. I had one of those names that has the potential for problems but didn't seem to. Feather.

Generally speaking I don't refer to anyone by just a surname, everything is first names, but there are a few exceptions such as if there is a need to tell someone off firmly I've been known to resort to just a surname once in a while.

On that showering question I think I answered something very similar previously some time ago but I'll repeat, what would I say to someone who asked not to, well I'd find out what the problem was first if it arose. In the end unless there was a medical issue you'd be expected to take a PE shower with everyone else and be strongly encouraged to or told to but if anyone was really set against it then I wouldn't ever actually force the issue and I don't think anyone else would either. But it really doesn't feature as an issue.

One for Alastair whose never heard of another person with the surname Orange.

There's a very well known one. Take That's Jason Orange. He was briefly on my bedroom wall in about 1995.

So now you know another!

I too enjoyed that nickname, that's the trouble with some names in school isn't it, they lay you open for big trouble if you're unlucky to have a name you can't do anything about. But that final point was well made about kids and cruelty in school. There has been a huge amount of emphasis on teachers from the likes of people such as Alan but it is well worth remembering that many unhappy youngsters at school are not made unhappy by their teachers, their subjects, their PE or being made to shower or whatever else but simply by the others they are forced to join each day alongside them in school. Kids can indeed be cruel.

I was just giving this some thought and thinking out of my last class in school how many of them I would be pleased to see again and the truth is that it amounted to about two of them, I'd have no interest in coming across anybody else or knowing about them. I wonder if anyone else holds a similar view to mine?

I hope you don't mind but I had a really good chuckle at that one Jon.

I'm a schoolkid encompassing the 1960s and the 1970s. I also have a surname that is a colour! I was at school with 5 of the 8 surnames names that Alastair placed, although not all in the same classes or at the same times, it covered a few years. I ended up with the nickname 'Notsolong' for a significant period of time. A pun prefacing my name. It was actually given to me by a rather nasty kid at school who had a habit of dishing out nicknames to others and making them stick on you. He'd seen me in the changing room and you can imagine what he meant with it. Itb stuck for ages but I stayed under 5 foot 6 inches in height by the time I left school and it seemed to take on a double meaning and become accepted as a nickname about my height instead, even though at the age of thirteen it had been about something far more personal.

Sometimes kids can be far crueller than any adults to each other, it's worth saying that on here I think.

There's a lot about your comment Samuel that is familiar to me there. Many schools long ago did feel like they had a lingering sense of menace around the corner, not just in the school gym. This was mostly implied and not real however, and just a means to an end, to instill discipline through a little bit of fear. I was always fearful of getting punished by a teacher. I didn't even like being shouted at by them. I was never hit and thankfully rarely shouted at either. Ivan you described that gym as austere, which is a good word, gym felt that way to me too. It was never fun, just hard work, I used too ache for the rest of the day after a session in the school gym and sometimes longer.

Samuel, from what you write it seems that your PE lessons and showers were very austere. However, it appears from your comments you were allowed to wear pants under your PE shorts which was more than I was allowed at my secondary school.

PE for me at public school was something I felt tried to knock the individuality out of me. The school gymnasium was the strongest dislike of the lot for me. We all had to turn up looking identical, just like Matthew McCarthy put in his PE list, our gym also required us in no more than the basic shorts which were white. We wore nothing on our feet and nothing on our bodies from the age of 11 until I was 15. This didn't just feel like being stripped of most of your clothes but to me felt like being stripped of most of my personality too. When you add to this the distancing effect of then being spoken to by the family surname rather than your own individual christian one it grew in me a further sense of loss of individuality.

The school gymnasium was a place where I felt distinctly vulnerable from the moment I entered it in my younger years, we all looked rather vulnerable in my opinion just because we were yet to properly develop and were having to show this openly. At the time I didn't like my body very much. I was regularly nervous and there often pervaded a sense of real and imagined menace.

Excessive discipline seemed to rule the gymnasium and little tolerance was allowed for failing to do well.

Under one strict PE disciplinarian we had, we would line up along the gymnasium wall at the start of the lesson and he would walk silently along saying nothing, going past each of us until he got to the end, making me wonder what he was thinking every time, then he'd just blow his whistle and we'd run to the middle of the gymnasium to be told what to do.

We had another PE teacher who always used to bring a small towel with him into the gymnasium and was often seen wiping his brow of sweat during our lessons. He didn't actually seem like he was very fit. He used this towel as a punishment tool on us, and would swipe it at you if you were too slow.

When we came to showers afterwards there was even a sense of menace there too. Our school had a shower room separate from where we actually changed. We had to go through a doorway to shower in the room. The door had a lock on it. We would all have to change out of our PE kit, on gym days just our shorts and pants, and file at the same time together into the shower room holding only our towel which would then be placed on a small ledge. Once we were all in the shower room the teacher would actually lock the door behind him and stand in front of it. We were locked in unable to leave while he watched with a clear view all of us shower. We finished only when he told us to and he unlocked the door again. It had a real sense of menace in my younger years. Sometimes we were made to have a fully cold shower after our hot one for what was deemed a bad lesson, which meant collective under performance as a rule. I can remember an accusation that our class contained too many over sensitive soft lads when we complained it was too cold.

Years 1965-1969.

Comment by: James G. on 27th September 2023 at 11:42

They work to a script, James - sorry, Mr G :-), and they are told to use your forename to be friendly. I must admit I don't mind that. I genuinely don't like anybody to call me "sir" I have a real aversion to the word. If anyone does, I always say my name is Alan. They can always call me "Sir" if ever I earn the title - and even then, I would not want to use a title. I am very unlikely to earn one though,, and I won't buy one, so it won't arise!

This is real interesting. At my school back in the 1980's I don't recall any of the teachers calling me by my surname at all, it was all first name terms whether boys or girls - that was until you went off to PE and then it was nothing but surname calling for everyone by every member on the PE team in school. When you think about that, isn't that a bit odd. My mates in school all called me by first name or an abbreviation of it. The occasional one of us had a nickname in use but it wasn't widespread.

There is one time when I strongly dislike people using my first name and it's when I'm talking to a total stranger, often on the phone, about some issue that needs sorting out. I had one guy I was speaking with regards problems with my mobile phone contract and during the course of a short conversation he would not stop dropping my first name into the end of every single sentence to the point it started to feel quite a creepy over familiar manner with me which I strongly disliked from someone who didn't even know me. He did this what felt like twenty or more times. Using my surname preceeded by Mister would have been fine though even if still excessive.

The surname 'thing' came up 'somewhere' (not here) a little while back.

It was a common means of address between males in the late Victorian period onwards (and possibly survived into the 60s).

I do recall an incident involving two of the leading UK mountaineers of the 1930s/40s: Bill Tilman & Eric Shipton who always addressed each other by their surnames. One day Shipton suggested that, as they knew each other very well, they should use their christian names. Tilman turned it down grumpily and when asked why, replied 'Because Eric is such a damn silly name'.

In my 'working life' I come across many people - I have no problems with using 'Sir', 'Madam', 'Gentlemen', 'Ladies', etc as forms of address, simply as a sign of respect. Although I dislike wearing a name badge, I have both christian & surnames on mine. It is nice that, on big (& other) occasions people come up & say 'Thank You Tim' ... but this is all going off topic.

Comment by: Tanya on 26th September 2023 at 21:37


Apart from thinking using surname only is rank bad manners and antisocial, to go from junior school where you are always known by your forename to be shouted at by old men calling you by your surname only makes you feel as if you were in prison.

I can only assume in earlier days, this was a throwback from when teachers had been in the army or police force, but I do know that these days even policemen get called by their forename by fellow officers and sergeants etc, and if they are in bad books they would normally be referred to as "P.C. Smith" or whatever.

I would HOPE teachers. who don't have one foot in the grave, or who didn't go through the military would these days would show more courtesy then our ignorant old farts did. I suppose it depends on who and what they teach at teacher training colleges these days.

Seeing the comments about the surnames allows me to recount this wonderful memory of mine from being at school at the early part of the 1960's in my boys school. In just my one class of about 28 boys we had a veritable colour of the rainbow amongst us all.

There was a Redd, Brown, White, Black, Gray, Green, Orange and Pink. A quarter of our class had surnames that were colours, 8 out of no more than 30 boys at most. I'm counting Black and White as colours even though technically they are not classed as such, just to show my education there. I'm sure they put us all in the same class on purpose, it felt more contrived than coincidental. A trick that was often employed by teachers for effect was to call out at least three surnames out of these boys to make it sound amusing. There were also jokes about what colour would be made if various boys mixed together and all that. My name was Gray, Everyone knows the Brown's and Black's but I had never heard anyone with the surname Orange and never have since, which amused me no end at the time. I did come across another Pink in adult life though. As everyone has said, teachers knew and referred to us primarily by surname, especially in physical education.

I don't think I've got anything new to add about physical education that hasn't already been said.

That is a cracking anecdote from David Terry isn't it.

So even the teacher himself thought he sounded more authoritative just known by his surname.

I wonder if he'd felt the same if he'd been approached and addressed as Mr Pratt by any chance.

This whole using surname only is very much a male thing isn't it, women and girls just don't do this to each other anywhere.

So then guys, what's the deal about getting called by your second name in school, did you mind or what and what got me from the earlier comment was all the boys calling each other by surnames too, why did you boys do that to each other in school in those days? Is it machismo or something.

I've mentioned once before, back in the late 60s I had a same age friend who was educated at a private prep school. I remember he once told me that he only knew his classmates by using their surnames. That is what they all did at his school, which I remember thinking really odd. He didn't even know most of their forenames. Time and culture continues to change.

Matt M: Early one morning on TV this summer (I am a martyr to insomnia) I happened to see an episode of an Edwardian TV "drama" made in the 70s called Upstairs Downstairs, (dreadful programme btw) all about an "important family" who lived in Eaton Square , where the family, even junior members of it, had to be called "sir", by the staff while they - young and old, invariably referred to the staff male and female by surname only. I think it is not only snobbish, but frankly downright rude. It is bad enough to make an employee a subordinate, but bloody teachers are not employers - indeed it is the parents money that keeps THEM employed. There was no need for it, and most certainly isn't now - perhaps Nathan can let us know if this is still the practice.

The other Matt mentions that his colleague preferred surname only to distinguish between himself and the school caretaker. A certain Edwardian snobbishness there too.

I was always lucky when I was an employee to have decent polite employers, who would never be so curt, and when I employed people I always used their first name. Perhaps some of the teaching profession need to learn common civility. By the way, I had a mate called Matthew at school, who always preferred to be called Matt. He really couldn't stand being called Matty, which is family inevitability did.

David Terry, a retired schoolmaster, recalled in a letter to The Times that on his first day at work he had approached a long-serving teacher in the staffroom and called him, respectfully, "Mr. Smith".

The intimidating response was: "I am Smith. Mr. Smith is the caretaker".

Apology received with thanks.